Even if we don’t realize it, in today’s day and age, energy is one of the most important aspects of everyone’s lives. It helps us do any task by powering our appliances at home and our business place or places of leisure. Energy has almost always been supplied by burning the various forms of fossil fuels, including natural gas, oil, petroleum, and coal. Scientists have been saying that an alternative should be found to the process due to the damage it was creating on the environment, especially as a long-term solution to energy production. Companies and individuals ignoring such statements and urgent requests for decades have brought the world to where it is today.
What Makes Energy Clean?
Scientists and researchers discovered and invented new ways of attaining energy to complete our daily tasks, and that was by the creation of affordable and clean energy. Clean energy is any energy produced by an element of nature available on the planet in infinite or endless amounts. These energy sources are termed as clean as they. The process used to convert it from mechanical or chemical energy into usable electric energy is clean. It does not harm the individuals using it or the environment around them.
Clean energy does not emit harmful gases such as greenhouse gases into the environment. Thus, it is an option that can help reduce the long-term effects of global warming that has been deteriorating the health of the planet, mainly owing to the large amounts of fossil fuels being burnt worldwide. A recent PR campaign tried to push ‘clean coal’ as a source of clean energy as it claimed to put CO2 back into the earth just like plants do but are a ploy for businesses not to lose their coal purchasing clients and not something that works unless implemented accurately, start to finish. Other than this, there are several different sources of energy that are considered clean energy that can be utilized by companies and the individual most suitable to the situation and the location they are in.
Types of Clean Energy
Clean energy sources, more often than not, are renewable energy sources which imply that their availability on earth or in the atmosphere is in a limitless surplus, according to man’s knowledge in the very least. Some of these sources of energy have been listed below:
- Wind energy: Wind power generation ranks globally as number one. It is the oldest known usage of renewable energy sources that date back to 3000 and 1500 BC. Wind turbines move because of the powerful force of the wind, after which this mechanical energy is converted into electrical energy that can be used for home appliances or company processes
- Hydropower: Ranking at number two, dams also date way back due to their usage to convert water movement or kinetic energy into electric energy. This method has its cons of destroying the marine life of the area’s habitat and livelihoods and hurting any surrounding ecosystems and those that used to reside nearby.
- Solar Energy: The ray of the sun being tapped for power is a sage move as you get sunlight in any part of the world, making the solar panel and the solar inverters market a lucrative business, especially during these times. Solar inverters help convert the sun’s heat energy and light energy into electric power that can be instantly used for the required device or appliance. They also provide the option of storing said energy in a battery to be used at a later time of need.
Why is Renewable Clean Energy Cheap?
One of the main reasons inventors and scientists believed that creating alternative sources of energy that are cheaper than fossil fuels as a must was to make an actual impactful change in the world to see improvements in the environment. Fossil fuels as a source of energy became widely popular due to their meager cost. Defeating this destructive enemy required the creation and selling of affordable and clean energy.
Another reason clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuel energy is that it is similar to a one-time investment as the costs for the once in a blue moon maintenance checks are minimal. So, most of the price goes into the initial installment of the system. Most non-renewable energy systems do not require any further electricity bill payments, making it the most cost-effective means of powering your home or office devices and appliances. The existence of the ‘learning curve’ for renewable clean energy gives it the added benefit of the upper hand, which ensured the future merely widens the gap between the increase in the purchase of fossil fuels and clean energy.
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